


a red hand

by theletterv (badletter)



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: M/M, References to Addiction, empathy and tenderness kind of, overdose mention, technically cheating and dissociating about it, updated with some fixes, v’s stockholm syndrome but kind of not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:13:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22127701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badletter/pseuds/theletterv
Summary: a moment of shared clarity.
Relationships: Ocelot/Venom Snake
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	a red hand

**Author's Note:**

> i don’t actually care for v/oce at all but fsr thinking about them comes easier than any vkaz or vquiet stuff i’ve been trying to roll around my brain.
> 
> for your listening pleasure

V comes in without knocking. Blink and he’d miss the way Ocelot starts in his chair. He’s clammy, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. Hands are shaking, he’s pretending he’s doing work but he can’t even hold a pen.

“Boss,” he says. V comes closer. A red hand clenches, unclenches. Ocelot keeps his eyes down like it’ll stop V from seeing how red they are, wet.

Part of V believes he is incapable of crying, any tears long since beaten out of him, but Ocelot is still only a man despite what he would have you think. We all have our weaknesses.

Clench, unclench.

Ocelot begins to stand, red hands, gloved, spread out before him. Stiff, he’s trying to hide the tremors. V says sit. He sits. “Boss,” Ocelot starts again, even in this state he tries to croon. To soothe.

The one that hurts digs at V, a phantom limb pressing the shrapnel in. A blinding pain and suddenly most of Ocelot’s paperwork, pens, tapes litter the floor. It’s all for show anyway, anything important kept out of sight. 

V stands at the edge of the desk. Ocelot still won’t look at him. His hair is awfully soft. A gentle hand brushes over Ocelot’s cheek, into his hair. A red hand, gloved smoothes over his.

Ocelot's eyes close. One more time. 

“B—“

The consonant sounds and V tugs, nails digging into scalp. Ocelot shudders. V sighs. He is so tired of being a punishment. “I'm not your Boss.”

Ocelot looks up. V comes in shades, tints. The lightest is _him_ , and most rarely seen for all the work they put into him. Funny how that works. The darkest is a hole, the one that hurts, but that could be _him_ , too. The real one, that Venom coursing through V’s veins. It leaves V out to drift, gnaw, ache. What falls between is the V most know, faraway and gentle. An eerie sight who haunts the medical platform, carries gifts for ghosts, always has so much to say about his sheep. 

But Ocelot has never seen this V. Or maybe he did, when he wasn’t V at all. This one is exhaustion. This one shouldn’t be.

Ocelot can’t remember his name, but neither can V.

“I know, V.” A gentle hand relents, fingers smoothing where crescents bit in. Neither of them are pretending. A rare moment of clarity to be shared. What luck. A tension eases out of V, replaced with that same weariness weighing on Ocelot. It is harder to know, but he needs this moment. Maybe they both do. It will not last.

V moves. Ocelot's eyes follow. Ocelot's chair is swiveled to the side, the man himself offering no resistance. V settles on the floor before him, one knee to the ground. Hand is taken in hand, red glove resting in red metal, arm turned upright. A gentle hand pushes Ocelot’s sleeve up. He remains as still as he can, fingertips trembling.

V lets out a hum, deep in the back of his throat. Not out of surprise or even irritation. He knew. Even when he’s not really there, it doesn’t take much to see that Ocelot is wasting away. He drifts as much as V, never fully there. He comes and goes, tints and shades just like V. Sometimes he is a red hand, the torturer. Sometimes he brings guidance, a voice. Sometimes he is broken.

The thought crosses V’s mind that Ocelot let it get like this. The withdrawals. It doesn’t take that long to set in. But Ocelot is too smart not to stay on top of it, and he certainly isn’t lacking in resources. He doesn’t seem like one for self-flagellation, too proud. Perhaps the pain is worth it for the clarity. Whatever is left of his truth is here, in these moments. As long as he can bear it.

V lets out another hum, puts that thought aside.

A gentle hand is that, gentle; featherlight touches dance over the scabs and bruises lighting his veins. Ocelot stills more with each brush of skin on skin. Some days V sees the ghosts of the same marks on his own arm, superimposed over the deep ugly scars that now rest there. He got hurt in the crash, but they hurt him more to make it look natural.

“This is why they cut my arms up. J—“ V’s teeth wrap around the sound and it sends a jolt of pain from shrapnel to jaw. 

A red hand, gloved, smoothes over his brow, thumb seeking bone. V leans into the touch. The smell of leather is comforting. He has been touched like this before, when they were remaking him. Ocelot's hair was shorter. His hands weren’t so red.

Nine years is a very long time.

“For all John’s shortcomings, he never had our problem,” Ocelot offers, wry. And why would he. John was sure. John was a pillar. He used up others in his times of weakness, not himself. V doesn't like the way _our_ sounds on his lips, the way it settles, warm, beneath the skin.

Maybe that warmth goes to his head. Maybe that’s why V presses a kiss to the inside of Ocelot’s wrist. There’s scars there too, deeper. Lips follow a gentle hand into the crook of his elbow. There is almost a reverence to the way he brushes against the tracks. Ocelot is killing himself for this charade and no one will ever thank him. V's head rests in his lap, face pressed into his side. He’s so thin.

“V,” a sigh, more fond than put out. “Why are you here?”

He needs to nip this in the bud. Well. They’re past the bud. He needs to save face. They are sharing this clarity but it would be so easy to pretend. He cannot see the shrapnel from here. The red hand is tucked away. It could be him, but so much kinder. A red hand, gloved, still goes to pet his hair.

The shrapnel aches on both ends. There is his grip on reality. It presses just enough into Ocelot, nothing but a thin shirt to cushion it, and in turn pushes back into V’s head. They’ve only ever been connected through pain, haven’t they? V's voice is muffled, hot and humid breath pushing through the fabric.

“You’re the last one who knew me.”

Ocelot hums, worries his cheek between his teeth. The medic had no records that could tell Ocelot who he really was. Everything had burned with MSF, and anything that hadn’t burned was too old to matter. So they talked, the two of them. Ocelot had to know what he’d be working with. There would be no progress otherwise. It was easier to edit than redo.

The medic was dodgy for a dead man. Only the bare minimum laid out. Draft, med school, hospital, and then eighteen years of his life thrown away because he couldn’t stay away from the morphine. One more rough day after years of rough days and he shoots up in a supply closet and overdoses. Thanks to his place of work, he lives, but he loses his medical license. It just gets worse from there. And at the bottom of the hole he meets John.

Neither of them needed to say that John was more of a mistake than any opiate addiction.

The dead man’s broken body sat on the bed and told him he shouldn’t be alive. That he wished he wasn’t. A weary laugh. “God has it out for me.”

Ocelot looks to the dead man kneeling before him, wearing a face that isn’t his own. He cannot help but agree that he should have died. In the crash, in the MSF, in the overdose, in the war. He was too resilient for his own good and they used that against him.

“You should hate me,” Ocelot decides. V peers up at him, his chin against Ocelot’s thigh. His gaze is the clearest it has been in nine years. A red hand comes to rest at Ocelot’s waist. A red hand can be gentle, too. They don’t have to hurt each other. Not always.

“That isn’t what you taught me.” He sounded almost petulant and Ocelot laughs a real laugh. It tingles at the base of V’s skull. He wants to feel that laugh with his head pressed against Ocelot’s skinny chest. He wants to feel that laugh against his mouth.

“Then what did I teach you? Not this, surely.” A red hand, gloved, works the band out of V’s hair. John never let it get long like this. John never got on his knees for him. John never let himself be held like this. John never.

V's cheek is tucked into his arm again now. “My longest friend,” he starts, moves in reverse. Crook, moving down. A gentle hand follows the scratch of his beard. His lips are softer than John’s, even with the scar. He does not stop at his wrist. A kiss is pressed to the center of a red hand, gloved. He could taste the leather on his tongue if he wanted to. “Always, always looking out for me.”

Ocelot breathes in.

John had known Ocelot for years, of course, but for V, Ocelot was always there. Before V was V. Before V was anyone. All nine years. He was so alone without him. Ocelot stood beside his bed. He talked to him. He brought him flowers, or were they for John? That shadow on the other side of the curtain. Ocelot took everything from V, but John took everything from Ocelot, hadn’t he? The three of them alone together.

V didn't love Ocelot, because John didn’t love Ocelot, but sometimes he thinks he wants to. Love is a funny thing.

You see, V knows he is a punishment. He is the grenade being held together by two sets of hands. He loves Kaz because they wanted him to. V thinks what’s left of him truly does love Kaz. The V who wasn’t V was fond of him, once upon a time. Enough to hate the way John put his hands on Kaz. Enough to stitch Kaz up every time. Enough to never say a thing because Kaz looked at John like he hung the fucking moon. Enough to be selfish.

Kaz had given the V who wasn’t V some of that coke he kept in his breast pocket, once; just a little pick me up, a you should really take it easy sometimes, a thank you for all the good work. They did lines off the medic’s desk and Kaz kissed him until he couldn’t think straight. But that didn’t matter. Not then, not now. One of them was going to let go. The pin would fall.

Goodbye.

Ocelot looked at John like he was the sun. It was going to burn him from the inside out, and he would let it. He _had_ let it. The fire started so long ago it was a wonder anything was left inside him. But there was. Adam still sat nestled between his ribs, feeding on what was left. A whale fall in his own body, past lives and old names alike.

V wonders if John put his hands on Adam, too. Was there anyone to stitch him up? Was there anyone at all? Was he alone, too? The two of them, alone together. Or was Adam kept at a distance? Did John ever care? Does he care that Adam is killing himself? V would care. He cares. He cares.

“A—“ It is not his name to say. But he wants to. He wants to feel the shape of it on his tongue. “Adam,” it is choked, strained, but it is so warm. V's cheeks are wet. Adam tenses. It doesn’t sound the same, but he isn’t sure he minds.

There is love in that name. And in Adam there is mourning, and an ache in his heart. That little self buried deep in his ribs stirring once again.

“I'm sorry.” V doesn't know what he’s apologizing for, really. V is a stranger in his own body, he cannot make up for years that aren’t his own. “I'm sorry.” Why is it so hard to breathe.

Adam folds his body over V, a red hand, gloved, rests at his nape. Lips pressed against his hair. Oh. Now V could hear his own heavy breathing, the sharp, too-short intakes. Heart hammering in his chest in time with the irregularity of his breath, blood pounding in his ears. Beneath that he hears Adam. Soft, soothing sounds. He is apologizing, too, the gentle hum of comforting words. As if V were a child. As if V were a wounded animal.

V is a punishment, but Adam will hold him together no matter how much it hurts. He can’t afford not to. And part of him wants to.

Attachment is sloppy, particularly when you are robbing someone of their personhood. But nine years is a long time and it is difficult to hold strong in the stolen face of a man you’ve loved since you were twenty-one. Adam is still only a man despite what he would have you think. We all have our weaknesses. And there is something so enticing about V.

Not just that Adam shaped him and that he remains malleable. Not even that there are times that show all his work did not go to waste, when he can look to him and really believe that this is the man he’s followed all these years.

No. It is when V defies these conditions that Adam feels drawn to him, magnetized.

Against all odds, the V who wasn’t V, the dead man, has resurfaced. He is waning but he bleeds with a love Adam has never known. All of his own volition. Perhaps Adam is undeserving. Perhaps Adam sees this is the tragedy of a man too broken, desperately reaching out for anything that understands him.

But Adam is fond enough to be selfish, too, and he understands V better than anyone ever could.

V weeps beneath him, now. he tries to be quiet, holding in what he can and muffling the rest into Adam’s side. Each sob is enough to rattle them both, great shuddering things. The tragedy of Kazuhira, of Adam, opened the door to a greater pain. It is a culmination of exhaustion, of a robbed life, of a knowing. One that will never leave as long as he remembers. It will be too much to bear. His head is killing him.

But Adam can make it all go away again. He finds confidence in his own treachery. This is his purpose.

The gentle pressure of another body atop V is gone. He tilts his head up, face red, disoriented; the haze of sadness mingling with a growing confusion. Adam takes V’s face in red hands, gloved. The soft leather smoothes away tears, feels nice against his skin. V leans into the touch. Warm and sure. Adam is always warm and sure.

“I'm going to have to forget,” V says. It is not a question. He is so tired. It’s already beginning to slip away from him.

The pain is enough to make him wish maybe, maybe if he threw himself off Mother Base enough they wouldn’t be able to put him back together. And the pain is enough to make him wish he could just be in bed with Kaz. And the pain is enough.

“Not yet, we still have some time together,” Ocelot says. Dry lips brush against V’s temple, the side without shrapnel. He could end it now, but Ocelot is fond enough to be selfish.

There might come a time when V is meant to know the truth, but not like this. There is a difference between the truth and two lives, split, lacking just enough in both that he feels less human than ever. No, Ocelot will live in this moment with him and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

It is better to be a shadow, a broken mirror. A phantom. A two-headed calf will not survive through the morning.

V's hands, red and gentle, are holding Ocelot’s wrists. His eye, closed. Pale eyes look down through pale lashes, studying his face, those scars. Long legs rest on either side of him; elbows digging into thighs, knees digging into ribs. Caged in. It is not comfortable but they are so close.

A thumb presses into the split in V’s lip, as if trying to feel it through leather. Then there are lips moving across his skin. They start just below the shrapnel, tracing the scar there to between his brows and onward. Chaste and light, but a shudder still runs down V’s spine. Each defect is given time and care. Part of him feels like he might be sick. The other craves this contact.

Dry lips press against V’s. His body wants to pull back but he stays still. Ocelot is holding him and he is holding Ocelot. He keeps his eye closed. A tongue traces the split in his lip. The bitter taste of wormwood still lingers.

He misses Kaz.

V can take himself out of this moment. He’s gotten good at that. And maybe when it’s over it won’t hurt so much. He can go back to Kaz and his sheep. He has a new tape for Paz, new music that he thinks she’ll like. Quiet will want to see the lizard he found the other day. He just has to get through this.

But he forgot to respond, to move with this other body. He did it wrong and Ocelot is going to be disappointed.

V opens his eye to apologize but Ocelot has already settled back in his seat. He doesn’t look disappointed. He just looks tired. Red hands, gloved, run through V’s hair, collecting it behind his head so he can wrap it once more in its band.

V's eye is cloudy, focusing somewhere past Ocelot. He probably doesn’t remember why he’s here. So much for being selfish. The phantom won’t even give him the satisfaction of putting him back under.

“I'm sorry, Ocelot,” he apologizes for good measure even if he’s not quite sure why. Ocelot gives him a brittle smile.

“Oh, there’s nothing to apologize for, Boss. Don’t you worry.” V smiles in response, lop-sided. His knee has long since started to ache so he stands.

V looks around, as if suddenly realizing his surroundings. He’s not in the hospital anymore. He remembers that. A step backward, turning to leave, and he hears the crumpling of paper under his boot.

It’s a mess in here. Ocelot isn’t usually messy. Papers and pens and tapes are collected, gently deposited back onto Ocelot’s desk.

“Thank you, Boss. Take care, alright?” Clipped enough to make V pull a funny face.

But V is already halfway out the door, fiddling with his iDroid. He hums that same little tune Quiet favors, uneven and repetitive.

Ocelot feels lonelier than ever. He goes back to work.

**Author's Note:**

> finally fixed a bunch of capitalization problems. and a few grammar things. have you read the two-headed calf poem lately?


End file.
